


Family Values

by chimosa



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, M/M, Murder Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimosa/pseuds/chimosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hannibal Lecter has made himself a family, but Abigail and Will are only his playthings, when it comes right down to it.</i>
</p>
<p>The second time she called Hannibal Lecter fifty past midnight, she nearly dropped her phone.</p>
<p>Blood will do that, Abigail thought as she pressed the phone to her ear, mindful of her slippery fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, obviously this takes some liberties with canon, but I couldn't help myself from exploring the family they _could_ have been. Feedback is greatly appreciated, so please, go wild.

The first time Abigail Hobbs called Dr. Hannibal Lecter at fifty past midnight, her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped her cell twice. The sweat on her cheek was uncomfortably warm against the phone’s glass face, but that didn’t stop her from pressing it painfully close to her ear. 

Each unanswered ring brought another sob muffled by her fist. _He’s not going to pick up,_ she thought hysterically.

She felt sick at the thought of walking back down the hallway to the room she shared with two other girls. What would she say if they saw her like this? 

Sorry, Daisy, but your new dormmate is having a tiny mental breakdown. No need to wake up the RA, but if you wouldn’t mind, there’s a man in the FBI you could contact instead. 

_I’m so sorry for waking you up, Amanda, but I was just dreaming of my father’s victims again._

“Abigail.”

Abigail couldn’t speak past the erratic stutter of her lungs, but Hannibal knew what she couldn’t say. He always knew.

“Calm down, Abigail. Agitation is completely normal for anyone entering into a new phase of life, and it’s hardly surprising your nightmares have resurfaced.”

Closing her eyes tightly, she could almost see the perfectly controlled man in front of her- face as smooth as a lake’s surface, his clothing pressed and tailored, even at this hour. 

He probably wears a suit to bed, Abigail thought and could feel her muscles loosen until she was slumped against the bathroom stall door. The tile floor’s coldness was beginning to seep through her flannel pants. 

“When you applied to the University, we discussed the possibility of a resurgence of your previous anxieties-” 

Abigail had to admire the way he danced around the words they were both thinking. 

_The murders._

Somehow even that thought couldn’t pierce the web of comfort that Hannibal’s voice weaved around her, words draping around her shoulders until they stopped heaving. 

“- but remember, you are stronger than this, Abigail. You are a survivor.”

_A survivor,_ Abigail repeated dully as exhaustion crept into the spaces that terror had recently eased away from. _I am a survivor._

“Now, tell me truthfully. Must I come get you?”

She had to clear her throat three times before she could reply. 

“No.”

“Good girl.”

The second time she called Hannibal Lecter fifty past midnight, she nearly dropped her phone.

Blood will do that, Abigail thought as she pressed the phone to her ear, mindful of her slippery fingers.

This time there were no tears. Instead, she felt like she was floating. Like she was shadows suspended on dust- the phrase came from the hidden groves of her memory and brought with it a rueful smile.

Still the phone continued to ring, and somehow in this altered state Abigail _knew_ Hannibal was refraining from picking up until the last possible moment. Toying with her, like he toyed with everyone. Like a boy, pulling the wings off flies just to watch them crawl. 

“Abigail,” he said and suddenly she could feel gravity bringing her back down to herself. The room spun and she had to lay down, forehead to the floor.

“Hannibal,” she finally was able to slur in return. Abigail could feel the music from downstairs shake the floorboards, just as she could see the light from under the door reflected in the whites of the boy’s wide, unblinking eyes. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Are you drunk?” 

To catch Hannibal Lecter off guard was such a rarity, Abigail couldn’t help but laugh. “You sound surprised.”

“When we last talked you indicated you were having difficulty socializing with your peers.”

“Well, now I’m drunk in a frat house. The quintessential college experience,” and Abigail was proud she could say “quintessential” with only the tiniest difficulty.

“And you called to tell me this?” He asked, the slightest hint of amusement curled against the edges of his words.

“No.” 

They were both quiet, Hannibal waiting with his infinite patience that stretched across millennia, Abigail trying not to look at the bloody scissors that only moments before had been in a guy’s guts. She could remember the way his beer-stale breath had felt on her lips; how he had shoved her into the wall when she had tried to tell him “Stop.”

“I need you.”

***

The morning found Hannibal in his sunlight-rich kitchen, preparing breakfast. He was as competent with a frying pan as he had been the night before with that boy’s body. Abigail, raised to respect that kind of craftsmanship, could only stand and watch. 

“Would you set the table?” Hannibal called over the crackle of heated bacon fat and she really shouldn’t be surprised that he knew she had been watching him. Abigail was beginning to suspect there was little he didn’t know, and that thought was strangely reassuring. 

She was careful as she brought two plates from the cabinet Hannibal had indicated to her with a silent nod. They were heavier than the ones her parents had used, something she could only guess had to do with their quality, and it would really suck to have Hannibal mad at her for breaking his expensive china now that she had seen the things he could do with a knife. 

Hannibal’s eyes never left the cutting board where he was expertly dicing onions, but since he knew everything he said: “We will be needing another place setting,” 

Abigail looked at the two plates in her hand, confused. “You invited someone else to breakfast?”

“I wouldn’t say invited,” and there was that aristocratic amusement again. The barest hint of a smile on his lips. “All the same, our dear Will will be joining us.”

She was surprised, but not nearly as surprised as Will when he walked in halfway through breakfast, absentmindedly cleaning his glasses.

“Abigail! What are you doing here?”

She could feel the weight of Hannibal’s gaze even as he cut his omelet with surgical precision. It was so different from Will’s- so well-meaning and hopeful and slightly askew- for a moment Abigail found it jarring.

“I had a paper to write for school,” she found herself saying. Lying had always come easily to her. “The dorm was pretty loud. Thirsty Thursday, you know?”

“Thirsty Thursday?” Will repeated with that smile that seemed to be wrenched from a dark place against his better judgement. Like he had long ago become wary of smiling.

“It’s dumb,” Abigail said with a shrug. “Any excuse to get drunk. Make poor decisions.”

A side glance rewarded Abigail with Hannibal’s distant approval. “Our Abigail is too smart to get caught up in that.”

She was _Our Abigail,_ just like Will was _Our Will._

She looked around the table at the broken family Hannibal had assembled. Will, trying to banish the sight of bodies and killers that followed him wherever he went with a shake of his head, too broken to look up even now that he was in a place he thought was safe. Abigail, with the barest hint of blood still to be found underneath her fingernails. And Hannibal, the most dangerous of all, satisfied by his place at the head of the table. 

This was her new place. This was where she belonged now, and she felt a swell of some emotion, something generous and tender for this new thing that they had become. It was enough that she blurted out: “We should go do something tonight. Together.”

“You want to go out?” Will asked with darting eyes, confusion in the lines of his forehead. 

“Yeah, like go to a movie or something. My parents used to take me to the movies on Fridays.” Will blinked and Hannibal refolded his napkin. 

“It’ll be nice. You know, like a family.”

Will’s quiet happiness at the word was nothing compared to the weight of Hannibal’s regard. He was pleased with her and that was a heady thing, even more powerful then whatever twisted feelings she had for her own father. For Garret Jacob Hobbs, she amended, finally renouncing his hold on her with the thought.

***

The problem with having her biological father die on her was that Abigail now knew that it was a possibility. Growing up, she never really questioned that her father would always be there. He could go to prison for killing those girls, maybe, but to have him die on her was such a profound paradigm shift it had taken two private psychiatrists, in-treatment at a mental hospital and even some members of the FBI to bring her back from the breaking point. 

Now that she’s here, she’ll be damned if she’d lose another father figure. Not that she thought Hannibal would get himself killed. He was smart enough to cheat death and walk away unscathed. But she worried he’d decide Abigail wasn’t worthy of his time, more trouble than he needed to deal with. So Abigail began to become obsessed with ways to make him happy. Make him proud of her. 

It wasn’t like it was a secret. Hannibal knew how she felt, of course he knew, but it amused him to watch her efforts. 

Unfortunately for Scott Perkins, Abigail only really knew of one way to prove her devotion. 

Looking back, it was really too easy to slip back into the role. Bait, as Nicholas Boyle said, even though she couldn’t stand to hear that then. She’d made peace with it by then, and never let it be said that therapy didn’t work. Abigail knew her strengths, her weaknesses, and everything in between because she had discussed it all, at great length. She knew her greatest gift was to widen her eyes and smile like she had never known the stink of death even as she led someone to their own.

“What is this?” Hannibal asked as he entered his study, warily eyeing the bound and gagged man on the floor.

Abigail’s hands twisted, nervous behind her back. “For you,” she offered, even as she felt the first stomach-plunging feelings of doubt. Had she gotten it wrong? She looked at the man, trying to see what Hannibal was seeing, with that still face carved of stone.

It was Scott Perkins’ faint resemblance to Will that first caught Abigail’s attention. She had been studying at a coffee shop and there he was, walking in like the words “For Dr Hannibal Lecter” were engraved on his forehead, and now she wondered if she should have carved the words in herself. 

It was Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ love for Abigail that sent him after girls that looked her. Who else did Hannibal care more about, in his twisted way, then Will Graham?

“Oh, Abigail,” Hannibal sighed sadly, and suddenly she knew she hadn’t gotten it right, not quite. Upset tears stung her eyes, but she knew Hannibal wouldn’t find those amusing, not now, so she refused to let them fall. “It was never about love for me.”

She was an idiot, the thought tightened inside her throat as she felt his chastisement somewhere deep and complex.

Hannibal bent over Scott Perkins, examined his bound hands and feet as he mused aloud, “What is to be done with you?”

He removed Scott Perkins’ gag with the practiced slice of a particularly sharp letter opener.

 “What the fuck? What the fuck!” Scott Perkins began to scream, his scruffy cheeks reddened unpleasantly as his blue eyes bulged. “What the fuck, you fucking bitch! Where the fuck am I? Let me the fuck go!”

Hannibal’s expression closed off, and Abigail was afraid to so much as blink. It was like the heavy, grey air before a storm, a gathering chill that had terrible possibility.

Too bad for Scott Perkins that he was too busy calling Abigail a cunt to notice.

“There’s no need for that kind of language,” Hannibal chided softly, before bringing the letter opener down with practiced ease. 

Hours later found Hannibal contentedly humming along with the violin of some fancy concerto or another (she could never keep them straight, no matter how many times she was told, they all sounded the same to her) as Abigail set the table for three. The liver in the frying pan sizzled merrily, filling the house with the smell of dinner. Of home.

A heavy hand on her shoulder made Abigail startle. She never heard Hannibal coming, especially when he was in his own home, but she quickly relaxed into the warm weight. Hannibal’s fingers stroked her neck in approval. “Thank you, Abigail,” he said, surveying the set table, but she knew he was talking about more than the flatware. 

“Of course,” she said, even as she heard Will making his way through the hallway. Just in time for dinner, for once. “Anytime.”

***

It came as a surprise, the day Abigail learned that Hannibal and Will weren’t a couple.

Hannibal’s fascination with the other man just seemed so all-consuming, Abigail couldn’t imagine it didn’t extend to all matters Will. He controlled what Will ate, who he trusted, what kept Will up at night. Hell, they were even raising her messed up ass as their pusedo-daughter. To Abigail it just seemed like a given. Sex was just so banal, of course they were doing it.

When she mentioned it, Hannibal had looked at her sidelong. “It’s understandable that you would feel this way. You see Will and me as stabilizing forces in your life. It’s natural to project onto us the same relationship your parents had with one another, to make for a more cohesive family unit. But I assure you, Abigail, it isn’t necessary for my relationship with Will to be anything other than platonic for us to support you.”

Abigail had bitten her tongue to prevent herself from following the subject any further. She had a tendency toward the sarcastic, and it was hard to predict sometimes when Hannibal would find it amusing and when he would get that preternatural stillness, like he were imagining what her viscera would look like splashed against the wall. 

While Abigail hadn’t said anything further, it certainly didn’t stop her from watching them together, from mentally cataloguing away the evidence to support her theory. 

Exhibit A:  
Will looked at Hannibal. Like, really looked. Where meeting anyone else’s gaze was so obviously a painful effort, Will could look into Hannibal’s long enough to smile. That _had_ to mean something.

Exhibit B:  
Will would always eat one last bite of what Abigail had dubbed Family Dinner to meet Jack Crawford and whatever horror show the FBI wanted to inflict on him next. Hannibal would smirk, that smugly satisfied look, and wish him well. True, most times it was because Hannibal probably already knew what fresh terrors awaited Will on the other end of that phone call, but it couldn’t all be that, could it?

Exhibit C:  
Because, when you thought about it, those macabre scenes Hannibal crafted, the ones that added lines to Will’s face, were sort of their own love letter, weren’t they?

Abigail had spent enough time watching TV crime dramas, and living her own crime drama, to know it was hardly enough evidence to convict. So she had to take Hannibal at his word that that was that. 

That was, until that one night she couldn’t sleep. 

By now, the three of them had formed their own rhythms, times they spent apart and together. Now Abigail spent the weekend at Hannibal’s place. It was nice to get out of the dorms and away from the CW-esque teen melodrama that was the University of Maryland’s undergraduate class of 2017. There was only so much boy-related shrieking and bitching about the puke smell in the shower that Abigail could take. 

Besides, the melodramas at Hannibal’s were more Shakespearian in scope, more cloak-and-dagger, and she had learned that a taste for the rarified was something one developed when hanging around Dr. Hannibal Lecter. 

Abigail was in the kitchen, rummaging for a midnight snack, when she heard the first hoarse yell. By now she knew that Hannibal preferred his space while he “worked,” but curiosity got the better of her. Following the sounds found Abigail at Hannibal’s bedroom door. 

As a rule, she never went in there. Not that he had ever brought it up, it just seemed like something he’s get persnickety about. 

After all, this was the same man that kept everything on his desk at a right angle. He folded his still-damp dishtowels after drying dishes. A place for everything and everything in its place, and Abigail was smart enough to know her place wasn’t near Hannibal’s bedroom. 

But the door was cracked just enough that she could push it open with a single fingertip and it was too easy to stand sideways and peak inside. 

And she only _meant_ to take a peak. 

Will was in the deep throes of a nightmare, that much was evident. The fact that he was naked was almost an after thought compared to the sheer agony written in the tendons straining his neck. The sheets twisted around his ankles even as his feet jerked for freedom, scampering like he was trying to run. The sweat on his skin glinted in what little light shone into the room, but all that was nothing compared to the hoarse screams.

To be this close to the sound, to watch as each new shout began from somewhere so intrinsic that his entire body quaked with the sound, it was enough to make the hairs on Abigail’s arms stand up.

She was so engrossed with the sight of Will that it took a long while for her brain to process anything else, kind of like those stupid Magic Eye tricks everyone had been obsessed with in junior high. Look at it once and all you see is the chaos. Step back and suddenly there’s a sailboat.

Step back and suddenly there was Hannibal. 

Twisted around Will like an invasive vine slowly smothering an oak tree, as if by pressing his skin to Will’s he could soak away whatever vitality Will had. His mouth was pressed to Will’s sweaty cheek, but it wasn’t in a soothing kiss. He wasn’t chasing away Will’s nightmares, he was reveling in them. He was tasting the sweat and tears even as he muttered words into Will’s temple. Abigail couldn’t hear what he said, but Will’s whimpers were enough to know that whatever paths his fervid imagination were following, they were steeped in human decay, and blood, and all those things that Hannibal could craft so masterfully when he was left to his own devices.

It was a sick symbiosis that she witnessed, this thing between the two men that was beautiful in a way that made her want to vomit. Will was glorious in his destruction, he was Hannibal’s obedient plaything, writhing to Hannibal’s puppet-master voice.

She didn’t make a sound as she turned away, she had seen enough, but still Hannibal knew she was there- 

(of course he knew, he always knew)

\- and he caught Abigail’s eye and smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I initially had no intention of writing more of this. I actually really like where it ended, but then I couldn't stop myself. So here's another section, and hopefully it won't take too much away from part one. If it does, let's just pretend this thing ended already and chalk this up to a hallucination a la Will Graham. 
> 
> As always, feedback is wonderful, so go nuts
> 
> ***

“It’s not that the paper is bad, Abigail. It’s a good paper, solid. It’s just that it isn’t really _great_ , and that’s the problem. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Abigail opened her mouth to lie, say yes I absolutely agree, if only to get out of the tiny office cramped with books and half-graded papers. Unfortunately, Professor Roebling read her inhalation as incomprehension and plowed onward.

“Look, the point of this class is to develop your eye and your palate. Art is about seeing life from the artist’s prism and understanding that within an historical context, do you see?”

 _I see you like the sound of your own voice,_ Abigail thought to herself but nodded along.

“What are the circumstances of the artist’s world that led to creation? Who came before and how did they shape the artist’s aesthetic? What parts of the artist’s society shaped the motifs behind the work’s rendering?”

“But I _did_ write about the historical context,” Abigail broke in, finally, flipping through the red-marked copy of her paper. “I can show you where-”

“Yes I know you wrote about that,” Professor Roebling- Mike, as he had introduced himself the first day of class, obviously having some sort of delusions of being “no different from you guys” despite being clearly in his forties- interrupted. “And you did a great job. The paper was meticulously researched, absolutely spot on in the comparison between Michelangelo’s pigmentation techniques and Raphael’s. And I appreciated your use of Vasari’s _Lives of the Artists_ -” 

Her copy of which had been given to her by Hannibal- beautifully bound and from his private collection- when she said she had signed up for this stupid class. She had had some misguided idea that taking an Art History course would give the two of them something to bond over, and his quiet delight when she had mentioned it over Family Dinner had felt like a real accomplishment. Now, listening to Professor Roebling- _Mike_ \- she wished she hadn’t bothered. 

“- it’s just that there was something missing from the paper, you know what I mean? The research was there, but there was no _life_ in the writing, Abigail; no expression, no emotion. It was just sort of flat. Dead.”

 _Story of my life,_ Abigail thought as the teacher crossed from behind his desk to sit uncomfortably close to Abigail on the small armchair. 

“I want to know what _you_ saw, how you felt looking at the work of two of the greatest painters of the High Renaissance. I want to read your paper and really get to know who Abigail Hobbs is, you know?”

His hand casually drifted to her knee, a gesture of camaraderie, but then just lingered. 

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Abigail. I can see you are smart, you have the potential to be an exceptional student you just need some direction. Besides, we’re only up to the sixteenth century, there’s a lot of ground to cover until we get to the modern day. I’m sure we will find something that speaks to you.”

He gave her knee a gentle squeeze. She could smell his cheap aftershave and thought _I’ve had men like you for breakfast_. But Abigail just smiled and tried to sound halfway genuine when she said “Thanks, Professor. I really appreciate your feedback.”

“Please,” Professor Roebling said, leaning closer. “Call me Mike.”

The problem was she knew it was true. She’d been dealing with the same sort of thing from all her teachers. _Who are you, Abigail, what is it you want?_ and Apply, rinse, and repeat. There’d been a lot of talk of sparking passions and getting out from under shadows and coming to life. The kinds of metaphors that had made her smile and think _If only you knew._

It came up often enough that she had been tempted, on more than one occasion, to pull out the Serial Killer Dead Dad trump card, but Hannibal wasn’t a fan of that trick. _Will and I have worked so hard to give you a fresh start. We have done everything in our power for you to start at the University without having the specter of Garret Jacob Hobbs following you there. To ruin that now, after everything, would be rude,_ and Abigail knew how he felt about that particular transgression.

***

Unfortunately the man snapping his fingers in impatience at Hannibal didn’t. 

“Let’s go, tickets. Come on, sir, I don’t have all day.”

“My apologies,” Hannibal said, peering down at the man’s name tag, committing it to memory. “Anthony,” 

Anthony rolled his eyes and handed back the ticket stubs. 

“Whatever, man. You’re in theater eight.”

“It’s not like it’s a big deal,” Abigail continued as they walked though the crowds to the theater at the very end of the hallway and to the left. “I still got a good grade and all. I just need to work on my ‘voice’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Hannibal’s hand slipped to Will’s lower back, ushering him through the rowdy Friday night crowd. “It means that you need to begin to take this criticism seriously. Your teachers are concerned about this problem, perhaps it is time for you to be as well.” 

He adeptly led a nervously blinking Will around a group of roughhousing teens until they got to the reassuring quiet of theater eight.

Abigail knew that coming to the movies was an indulgence, something neither Hannibal nor Will would ever do given the choice. Hannibal was better suited to spending his Friday nights at some stuffy opera or opening gala, whereas Will would have been much happier at that middle-of-nowhere house of his, with only his dogs for company and miles from another human being. Bringing her to the movies was as close to a consideration for Abigail’s hopelessly middle class upbringing that Hannibal was ever going to make, and she tried not to abuse that privilege too much. For Will, she chose films that had been out long enough the crowds were sure to have died down, making for a near-empty theater. For Hannibal, she combed through newspaper reviews for films that were boring, foreign, boringly foreign or some mind-numbing combination of all three. Something with lots of prolonged shots of dust or sand or whatever was passing as a heavy handed metaphor these days. 

Once seated, with only an elderly couple ten rows ahead as company, Will’s shoulder loosened from their protective hunch as he settled into his chair. 

“This is a good problem to have, Abigail. Your teachers see potential in you and they want to see you succeed. There are plenty of other students that they’ve written off, believe me. The fact that they care enough to call you into conferences means a lot.”

“Is that what you do, when you teach? Nag a select group of students and write off everyone else?”

“When I see potential, sure,” Will’s face creased ruefully as he admitted: “I just don’t see it very often.”

Hannibal snorted a laugh and Will’s face lightened at the sound even as the theater dimmed. A notice prompted the audience to turn off their cell phones, which Will did with particular relish. The tension he wore like a well-fitted suit began to ease as he was content to sit in a dark room while no expectations were asked of him. 

Abigail, for her part, was pleased when the harp music started up. It seemed like this movie would be suitably tedious enough to keep Hannibal’s attention. He seemed to be enjoying himself, if by now she had learned to parse the different stillnesses of his expression correctly. Though that could have less to do with the film and everything to do with Will’s outstretched fingers casually brushing against the inside of Hannibal’s knee. 

***  
It wouldn’t bother her so much, what all her teachers said, if Abigail hadn’t been feeling like she was going through an identity crises already. It had been months, but still Abigail hadn’t been able to forget the sight of Hannibal cutting into Scott Perkins with adroit skill. He had severed tendons and separated organs with nothing but a _letter opener_ and Abigail fully acknowledged she was all kinds of fucked up because her first thought had been _I want that._

To have that kind of control, that sort of meticulous knowledge of life and death, seemed like something worth aspiring toward. She had killed, but both times had been in a panic- fight or flight instinct ramped up to eleven. Both times had been messy, blood coating her hands and under her fingernails for days afterward. Hannibal killed like he was leading an orchestra- with passion and _feeling_ and absolute control. He even seemed to have command over where Scott Perkin’s very blood had run, leaving not even a faint speck on his starched shirt. 

She had gone on a bit of a binge on the Tattlecrime.com archives after that, reading up on every mention of the Chesapeake Ripper. She studied the pictures, poured over the details Freddie Lounds had written with morbid zeal, reading with her own equally morbid zeal. Her roommate Megan peaked over her shoulder one day, curious as to what she had been obsessively reading for hours, and laughed.

“Oh, that guy,” she had said throwing her backpack onto her bed as she got ready for an evening class. “That stuff about the Ripper is nuts. I got lost for a week once reading up on him.”

Abigail, relieved to not be the only freak in the room for once, had said guilelessly, “Oh, yeah? This stuff’s pretty brutal, huh?”

“Definitely. Be careful, though, reading that stuff can turn into a black hole. First it’s an article on Tattlecrime, then it’s Wikipedia, next thing you know you’re reading about the Zodiac Killer in one tab and Jeffrey Dahmer on another. It’s interesting stuff, but it’ll suck you in.”

That’s when Abigail had decided she had finally found a friend.

***

“Abigail, tall soy latte?” the barista called and she grabbed her drink and made her way to the couches Megan and Lydia had commandeered. 

The thing was, the more she read about these killers the more she realized that the good ones, the _really_ good ones, had something interesting to say with every kill. That totem pole killer, or that one guy with his tongue in the Bible? Those were great because they weren’t just some random slash job. They were considered, and crafted. The devil was in the details, and boy was the Ripper good on details. If she were going to do it, it would be more than a simple matter of not getting caught. She’d have to make it _mean_ something or why bother at all?

“I think you should just do it,” Megan was saying. “Just get it over with, you know?” 

For a moment Abigail was startled. Had she been talking out loud? If she had turned into Will, randomly muttering “gut you like a fish” and completely unaware of the suburban mom tightly clutching her child’s hand as she hurried by, there were going to be problems at home. 

“But what about making it mean something?” Lydia was saying, pulling Abigail out of her thoughts. “Shouldn’t it be meaningful? Special?”

“Nah. Your first time is going to be a mess, why bother putting the experience up on a pedestal when you know it’s going to be terrible? You’ll be hopelessly disappointed, I promise. But then, with each new one you get a little more practice so that when your Prince Charming comes, then you can really pull out all the stops.”

“That’s not what Disney taught me,” laughed Lydia and Megan threw her cup’s cardboard sleeve at her.

“If you are getting sex advice from Disney you have issues on a whole different level. What about you, Abs? Did you wait for someone special your first time or just kinda go for it, guns blazing?”

Abigail thought of Nicholas Boyle and how surprised he was to find his intestines suddenly spilling out of his stomach. “I guess I just kinda went for it.”

“The end is near, ladies and gentlemen! Your only hope for salvation is to let go of your sin and repent!” A man with soiled clothes and bulging eyes began to yell in the middle of the Starbucks as Megan muttered an unimpressed “Oh, Lord.”

Waving a leather bound book which could have been the Bible, could just as easily have been Tolstoy for all the dirt and wear on it, the man screamed about sin as the two employees and the overweight manager scrambled out from behind the counter toward the ranting lunatic.

“Let me tell you I have _seen_ the Lord and I have _seen_ the devil! And Satan has no power if you look him in the eye and renounce his hold on your life. If you cast him from your mind, you can live forever! Yes, you can live in eternal peace.”

 _I highly doubt you’ve met the devil,_ Abigail thought in amusement as she sipped her latte and watched the manager tackle the man to the floor. _But how would you like to meet his daughter?_

***

She was late for dinner that night. She hadn’t realized how late it was until she rushed in and saw Will already halfway through his meal. If she had been later than _Will_ , she looked worriedly up at Hannibal who was cutting into his meat with precise and unimpressed movements. 

“There you are, we were starting to get worried,” Will said, waving her to her customary seat at Hannibal’s right. 

Hannibal certainly didn’t look worried, she noticed as she scooted her chair in with a held breath, hands twisting nervously in her lap. He didn’t look like anything, with his rigid posture and the very exact way he wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. He took a sip of water and said, clearly enunciating each word: “If you are going to be late, Abigail, the least you could do is call.”

He still hadn’t looked at her and Abigail was starting to get that horrible feeling that he was distancing himself from her, that any moment he would lunge forward, using his steak knife to correct the lapse in manners. Not that she thought he would do anything in front of Will, but the way they had been cozying up in that movie theater, Abigail wasn’t about to take any chances on that front.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I am so sorry, and next time I’ll call, time just sort of slipped away from me. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t,” was the curt reply and finally he deigned to look at her. It was like opening a door the day after a blizzard had fallen, cold air and snow tumbling into the house, piercing what was once warm and safe. “Go wash your hands, Abigail. Dinner is waiting.”

It felt like a small mercy to escape into the kitchen. It wasn’t until she was reaching for the soap that she realized how merciful Hannibal had actually been. Abigail cursed under her breath when she saw, attacking the spaces between her fingers with soap. A slight pink lather foamed from where she hadn’t quite gotten all the blood off on the way over.

Hannibal nodded his approval when she retook her seat. 

Will’s eyes didn’t quite meet Abigail’s as he asked “So is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Like I said, I just lost track of the time.”

“I know how that goes,” Will replied, gallows humor from the man that regularly sleepwalked the hour from his home to Hannibal’s. Abigail picked up her fork, but it wasn’t until she was chewing her bite of food that she noticed the pointed way Will was staring at her- in a sideways kind of a way. She started to ask, but stopped herself, rapidly chewing and swallowing with a glance at Hannibal. 

“What?” 

A small smile played across Will’s face as he said,“Well? Any particular reason you lost track of time? Was it something in particular?”

Oh God, did he know? 

“Maybe someone?” He playfully amended.

Comprehension was the head rush as oxygen clamoured back into her lungs from where she had been holding her breath. It was such a relief to realize what he was getting at she nearly laughed out loud. “Oh you mean- like someone, like _that_.” Abigail was careful not to look away from Will as she said “I mean, I guess you could say that there’s this guy...”

Will looked triumphant, with a happy “I told you” thrown at Hannibal before grilling her with questions on her imaginary boyfriend. She tried to answer as vaguely as she could, describing his hair and height while steering away from what it had felt like to hold his heart in her hand. 

It was fun at first, the whole game of double speak that Hannibal was so good at, but she quickly ran out of things to say. Will, thinking that his teasing was making her uncomfortable swiftly switched the subject.

“Are things getting any easier in art history?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “But there’s this overnight trip to D.C. coming up, we’re supposed to hit up some of the museums. Get exposed to art and all that.”

“That could be fun,” said Will, his tone made it clear he didn’t have a high opinion of standing around inside a museum all day. “Hannibal, doesn’t that sound like fun?”

It was so obvious a tactic to pull Hannibal from his silence, and an unskilled one at that, that Abigail wasn’t expecting it to work. So she was surprised when he said, eyes very intentionally looking down at his plate, “Some exposure might do you some good to broaden your mind with first-hand experience. It may even lead you to finding a solution for this problem you are having in class, with discovering who you are.” 

Hannibal went upstairs shortly after dinner, claiming to have work to do, but Abigail couldn’t shake that horrible feeling she had disappointed him. Will washed a dish and handed it to her, and that was something she wouldn’t ever understand. Why wash dishes by hand when there was a perfectly good dishwasher by the sink was beyond her. Still, she obediently rubbed a towel across the surface, laying the plate in a stack by her elbow when she was done.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Will said, trying to smile reassuringly behind slight glassy eyes. “He really was concerned about you when you were late for dinner. I don’t think he’s used to actually worrying about people that often.”

***

Abigail changed for bed, her earlier flush of pride at her first deliberate kill had tapered down to contemplation. The inspiration she had half-way expected would strike once she had the bound and gagged man in front of her hadn’t manifested once she was in  
the moment.

Instead she had heard the voices of others whispering to her as she stared down, the most distinct of which had been Garret Jacob Hobbs directing her to go ahead and do it, like they talked about. _Don’t nick the bowels,_ he instructed and while the last thing she intended to be was anything like that man that was once her father, Abigail really didn’t have any other good ideas. Besides, cutting into him like a deer was as good a place to start as any. Once he was opened and she was staring at his still-quivering organs, she was left to her own devices. Uninspired she poked at a lung through the ribcage, watching it deflate as she tried to recall the cases Freddie Lounds had written about. Cutting the man’s tongue out was tricker than it had seemed when she read the blog entry, blood filled his mouth and throat until he sputtered, choking to death. 

_That’s anticlimactic,_ Abigail had thought and wondered if this was what Megan had meant when she called her first time disappointing. Hopefully, sex would be a little different from this.

 _Well,_ she surveyed the man splayed in front of her. _No learning is wasted._

But no matter how much she poked and prodded, slashed and explored, she couldn’t quite get a feel for what she should do, what her “voice” should sound like.

“Who is Abigail Hobbs,” her teachers kept asking her and Abigail looked down at the gore under her hands.

 _Abigail Hobbs,_ she thought, disgusted at herself. _is a mess._

Disposing of the body had been easy enough; watching Hannibal doing it twice now had yielded enough information that she felt certain it wouldn’t be found anytime soon, and that’s the way she wanted it. _If you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, keep it to yourself._

As Abigail slid between the cool spaces between her sheets that night, her shin touched something solid. Curious, and with a hint of trepidation, Abigail threw back the covers to reveal a box, covered in a fine silk cloth. A present, which she opened fully expecting to see some unfortunate’s eyeball or some other gruesome punishment for angering Hannibal. 

Instead what she found took her breath away.

A set of gorgeous, white handled Fällkniven hunting knives. Lovingly, Abigail picked each one up and held it to the light, catching the faint glow of her bedside lamp in the pristine shine. As she shifted the gift to her lap, a cream paper fluttered out from the silk. A note, unsigned and unadorned but for the letters written in precise penmanship.

_Happy hunting._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I can't fool myself anymore: this is turning into a multi-chapter thing. I'm guessing it will be done in two more, but who knows. My outline keeps getting longer and longer... Anyway, here's part 3, I hope you like it. There is a warning- a character you may or may not care about dies in this section. You have been forewarned, so I hope it mitigates any upset the event might cause. Also, this plays amongst major plot points in Roti, so if you haven't seen that episode yet, why in god's name *haven't* you watched the best hour of television of all time?
> 
> As always, feedback is what's keeping me going at this point, so any and all is sincerely appreciated.

Will wasn’t looking too great the morning Abigail stopped by to pick up a suitcase for the overnight to D.C. His eyes were less focused than usual, darting about nervously as he ushered her into his home. There was an unattractive sheen of sweat on his upper lip, and the stale smell of sheer exhaustion lingering in the air.

“Are you okay,” she asked finally, the denial that anything was wrong came from him as swiftly as she figured it would. 

“You look-” _like shit_ “kind of... moist”

Will barked out a laugh. “Moist?”

“Yeah,” Abigail confirmed. The light was dim from where Will had left his heavy curtains intentionally _down_ but even through that she could see where his shirt stuck to his belly and lower back. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yep,” Will confirmed, giving Wilbur the dog a vigorous pet on the flank. “I see Hannibal nearly every day.”

Abigail’s nose crinkled at the lame joke, made even worse by the half-hearted delivery. “Ha. Ha. You know what I mean, have you seen a real doctor? With a white coat and a stethoscope?”

Will sighed, scrubbing his hands across his face and under his glasses, hard enough that Abigail watched as his skin reddened with the contact. Color high in his cheeks he said, “Yeah, actually, I went to the stethoscope-doctor the other day. They did a bunch of tests, but didn’t find anything. I’m perfectly healthy,” he enunciated the last two words bitterly.

“Healthy? What kind of hack did you go see?”

“A specialist. Hannibal spoke highly of him, he was even able to get me an appointment right away.”

“I see,” Abigail said and she was beginning to. Whatever was happening with Will was some escalation in the weird game Hannibal was playing with him- bend him as far as he could go and wait to see if he snapped back or broke apart. It was all a bit above Abigail’s level of understanding, she freely admitted. As much as Hannibal wouldn’t respond very well to her interference, there was another reason she didn’t say another word about Will’s very obvious illness. 

As awful as it was to admit, she didn’t really care. Of course, she loved Will and what he represented in her life, but she was a teenager, not to mention one on the cusp of a sociopathic breakthrough. It was little wonder that she was self-involved. 

“I have some follow up tests tomorrow,” Will said, handing Abigail the small suitcase she had come for. “I’ll let you know how they go.”

“Okay,” she said. “You do that.”

***  
The trip to D.C. went about the way Abigail thought it would. There were only twelve of them in total, traipsing through the long marble floors of museums after museums. All day Abigail stared at art, feeling decidedly underwhelmed.

Professor Roebling must have read it on her carefully blank face, because he caught her arm as the group turned the corner in the National Gallery so that it was just the two of them left to stare up at yet another Virgin Mary nursing a Christ child with anatomically incorrect breasts. 

“Nothing’s really speaking to you, is it?” He whispered, his breath warm as it played across her cheek.

Abigail shrugged, stepping backward.

“It’s okay,” he said, stepping nearer, closing the distance between them once more. “If you want to come with me, there is one other museum we might be able to catch open if we leave now.”

She was annoyed at the obvious ploy to get her alone, but not as much as she was intrigued by the lure of something different. “Great, we can catch up with the group and-”

“They all want to go to dinner, and there really isn’t any time to waste. We’ll have to leave now.”

And even though she could see his end game a mile away, compared to what Hannibal played it was practically Candyland, Abigail went along with it. It wasn’t like she was really in any danger she couldn’t easily protect herself from. She was pulled out the door, past tourists, and toward a strange, wheel-shaped building.

As it turned out, the Hirshhorn Museum was exactly the thing she had been waiting for all along. 

“I knew you’d be a modernist as soon as I saw you,” Professor Roebling said as Abigail lost herself in floor after floor of clean lines and conceptual thoughts and saturated paintings. It was like something shifting inside of her, and suddenly everything made _sense_. Without the filigree and naked nymphs and those horrible portraits of centuries-dead rich people, here where everything was stripped down and brutal and laid bare, suddenly she had found something worth looking at. 

Stepping in to an installation room of Robert Irwin’s, surrounded by clean white walls and stark white lighting, it felt like Abigail could breath a little easier. It was a feeling that nothing could ruin, not even Professor Roebling’s hands on her hips as he pulled her toward him for a kiss.

Later that night, still riding high on a feeling of wonder, she opened the connecting door when he knocked, stepping aside to let him in. She might have taken an art history course for Hannibal’s sake, but she started sleeping with her professor for her own. 

***

Abigail was able to successfully avoid going home for the next couple of weeks. It wasn’t deliberate, or at least she told herself it wasn’t. She just sort of got busy. First there was a paper to write on the art she had seen from the D.C. trip. She got nothing but glowing notes which were only _mostly_ because of the things she did with Professor Roebling behind closed doors.

Abigail knew it wasn’t love, despite what he feverishly murmured to her when they got together. It turned out Roebling really liked to be tied down, and Abigail just happened to have a second hand copy of _The Complete Book of Knots_ that she’d been meaning to work her way through. 

After that, there was the chemistry test that was (completely arbitrarily and unfairly) going to be worth half of their final grade. For weeks, Abigail hadn’t had time to make the drive to Baltimore for dinner, she was lucky the days she got as far as the dining hall for a meal. Mostly, she was sealed off in the library, cramming alongside her equally miserable classmates. 

It was after the test, moments after walking out of the classroom, in fact, that she’d gotten the phone call. The call ID said “Hannibal L” and Abigail was just so excited to be done with the whole chem ordeal, she was riding high on endorphins when she picked up the phone.

“It’s done,” she said, triumphant as she answered the phone. “The test from hell is officially over and guess who has two thumbs and actually stands a good chance of passing?”

“Will is in a coma.” It was like the floor had been pulled out and rearranged from under her. Legs shaking, she leaned against a wall, sliding down until she sat. 

Ignoring the looks she was getting, she pressed her ear against the phone and could faintly hear the familiar sounds of heart monitors and P.A. system announcements, calling for doctors, in the background.

“Where?” 

***  
Abigail passed Dr Alana Bloom in the waiting room, but she wasn’t exactly in the mood for pleasantries. Slipping past the desk nurses, Abigail was almost at Will’s room door when she was stopped. 

“No family beyond this point,” said a surly nurse, clearly thrilled to be in the middle of doing her rounds.

Abigail opened her mouth to respond- something scathing, something awful that was bubbling inside of her- but the door opened and there was Hannibal, as calm as ever.

“Thank you, Nurse Madison. This is our daughter, I’ve been expecting her.” 

Opening his arms in invitation, Abigail fell into the strength of Hannibal’s embrace. He held her tight, blocking out all sound and light and air. The embrace wasn’t meant entirely as comfort, it was a warning. Her absences hadn’t gone unnoticed.

 _Your place is with me,_ it said. For a moment she wondered if, like a python, he intended to squeeze the breath out of her before devouring her whole. 

The thought was strangely reassuring.

“How is he?” Abigail asked when he released her at last.

“Come see for yourself,” Hannibal replied grimly. 

Seeing Will hooked up to a respirator, while certainly not the worst thing she had ever seen, was still upsetting. Tears pricked her eyes as she followed the gentle cadence of his chest, rising softly up and down. She thought of the last time she had seen him, obviously ill and suffering, and how she hadn’t really cared. The shame of it laid heavy in her stomach.

“What happened?” Abigail asked, ready for whatever half truths Hannibal threw her way. 

There’s something about a serial killer on the loose, and something about him pretending to be the Ripper. Abigail made a mental note to check Tattlecrime to learn more about that. Something about Dr. Bloom in danger and a feverish Will dragging himself through the snow to shoot the man, Gideon, himself. 

It’s a long, complicated story and by the end Abigail is angry. She’s angry at Will for his dogged tenacity that landed him in a coma. She’s mad at Hannibal for whatever it is he’d done to get Will in this state- and even though his hands were as clean as they ever were, she knew he was involved somehow, in ways that were dank and slippery and complex. Most of all, though, she was mad as hell that all of this went on without her. Abigail was out there, living her life, angsting over chemistry tests and roommates that left the room looking like a shitshow; juggling her breathtakingly inappropriate affair with a teacher while worrying over her burgeoning career as a teenage serial killer, and yet somehow she _still_ was the least interesting one in the room. 

It was so obnoxiously unfair. 

Will woke from his coma with little fanfare: one moment he was dead to the world and the next, he wasn’t. It happened while Abigail was off taking a survey of the hospital’s cafeteria to find something halfway decent to bring back to Hannibal. 

Big surprise, Hannibal wasn’t the easiest person to buy food for and she could see his aristocratic displeasure with each rubbery meat by-product and snack pack of syrupy peach slices she procured. He was pragmatic enough that he didn’t refuse what she brought him, saying a perfunctory “thank you” every time, but his displeasure was a tangible thing. Sometimes she could feel it rolling off of him and she imagined if she only reached out, she could touch it’s icy surface. 

“They have mystery meat and mashed potatoes, which I figured would be better than yesterday’s hamburger,” Abigail announced as she stepped into the room. But when she saw Will sitting up and blinking, pale amongst the starch white sheets, she nearly dropped the tray. “Will!”

“Hey,” he said, the word drawn out, as if it was it a sentence all of it’s own. Will’s voice was husky with disuse, painful to hear, but Abigail was relieved to hear it all the same. She took a moment to put the tray down next to the sink, using the excuse to compose herself, before turning back around. Hannibal sat in the only chair in the room, hand clasping Will’s, like it had been doing ever since that first awful day they had spent, waiting in silence for Will to wake up. 

For a moment Abigail stared at them, at the complete picture they made, and she couldn’t imagine a way she fit in. Hannibal had been playing the role of devoted partner all week, looking tragic with his crumpled suit and bleak, pinched eyes. He was unfailingly polite, thanking the nurses every time they made their rounds and talking medical jargon with the doctors, which somehow only made him look even more pitiable. Like the formalities were the only thing keeping this great man together, and Abigail had gotten used to the nurses as they left an extra Jello pack because Hannibal “Looked like he could use something to eat.”

But then Will turned up the palm of his free hand and Abigail took it for the offer it was. Sitting gingerly on the bed’s sagging mattress, she closed her fingers around his, her other hand encircling his wrist and holding fast. Will lay back, and it didn’t seem right that a man that had been sleeping for a week straight should look so exhausted. Still, his eyes fluttered closed and his breathing slowed, and all Abigail could do was hold on. 

Life got simultaneously easier and harder after that. Abigail still had classes to attend, papers to write, but there was a malaise hanging around her every action sometimes she wondered if whatever Will had was contagious. The problem was, college lost it’s appeal when she was so busy shuttling between the dorms to Will’s house to feed the dogs, and back again to the hospital to sit by Will’s bedside. She brought schoolwork, pretended to study impressively thick textbooks, though nothing she read seemed to stick. Abigail could feel herself fade away, submerged by tedious daily tasks and all the little things that needed to get done to prepare for Will to leave the hospital, but she didn’t care. 

The long, lonely roads up to Will’s house should have annoyed her, but they were soothing to drive along. They lulled her into a place where her mind was free to consider everything and nothing, and maybe that’s why Will and his overworked imagination had chosen someplace that’s address was _literally_ turn left off the paved road. When she was able to make it out early enough the sun was still up, Abigail took to exploring the woods, following wherever Will’s dog pack led, committing the land to memory (no learning is wasted). It was almost a relief to lose her sense of self to Will’s recovery. 

Finally there came the day the doctors couldn’t think of any good reason not to release their mystery ailment patient into the care of the medically-licensed and wholly competent Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Answers weren’t forthcoming, no matter what tests they ran and Abigail had to assume that they wouldn’t find anything as long as Hannibal was there “advising” the doctors as to what to scan or palpate next. 

Which was just as well, because sick or not, Abigail was just glad to bring Will home. Even with his occasional spells of agitation and feverish sweats. Then there were the times he would just stare, eyebrows heavily drawn, jaw clenched and she knew he was just barely holding it together. He started working cases again, which Abigail could see had Bad Idea written all over it, but apparently the FBI was unable to function without Will, half-mad or not. While he carefully avoided saying anything to Abigail on the subject, she had her suspicions that the hallucinations that had landed Will in the hospital to begin with hadn’t evaporated over night. 

A suspicion that was soon confirmed the day she walked in to Hannibal’s study to find Alana Bloom’s blood all over the floor. 

“Will?” Abigail asked, cautiously approaching the muttering man with his hands deep inside his friend and colleague’s chest cavity. He wasn’t able to see her, didn’t seem to know Abigail was there, as he made swift work of removing some red-slicked organ. _Surgical trophies_ as he had called the Chesapeake Ripper’s work, and now she could see why. It was in the loving way he handled the meat, in the almost reverent way he sliced away gristle and veins to reveal the prize hidden within. 

“If I kill her,” he was whispering, words bubbling together into a boiling stew of madness. “If I kill her like he would, maybe just maybe. But can I understand him? If I kill her like he would maybe I can understand him. But can I understand him? Can I ever really understand him?”

Suddenly Will’s head snapped up, staring at nothing with such intent Abigail’s neck prickled. “You are dead, I know you are dead, why won’t you _go away?_ Abigail is mine now and you can rot in hell.”

She should be creeped out that Will was talking to her dead biological dad, but it was good for her ego, to be claimed by him, even in the depths of his madness. Will cocked one ear, head tilting to the side like one of his beloved mutts, listening for something in a frequency beyond Abigail’s range. He smiled, baring his teeth. The flecks of blood on his glasses made him feral. “This is my design,” he whispered, repeating it again and again until it was all just noise, like the gentle crash of waves on a beach. 

But just as abruptly as it had turned before, Will’s mood changed when he looked down at what was left of Dr. Alana Bloom. His face crumbled, a wretched sob escaped his lips. 

“Oh God, I don’t understand. I thought I’d understand but I just. I just. I’ve become,” Will stuttered, and Abigail stepped closer, wary of any sudden behavioral changes. Will was pure Id at the moment and there was no telling what he might do next. A piteous sob broke the air as he said, words painted with the thousand horrible things he had seen in his life: “What’s happening to me?” 

“Will.”

Enter Dr Hannibal Lecter, stage right. 

He spared a glance at Abigail, but his full attention was on the man keening and rocking in a puddle of gore. 

“Will, you are having another episode. Come here, now. Come with me.”

“I just, I thought,” Will said, breath still quick but becoming deeper the closer he stepped toward Hannibal. So obedient, when he heard the voice of his master, bringing him to heel. 

“You thought, what, Will?” He held open his arms, to take Will in an embrace, but the other man balked.

“I can’t,” his words high pitched, agonized.

“Come here.”

“I’ll get blood all over your suit.”

Hannibal looked at the hands Will was holding out, as if for inspection or in supplication. Hannibal moved forward abruptly, clasping both of Will’s hands in one of his large, capable ones and forced Will to look into his eyes.

“What blood, Will?” Will whimpered, tried to pull away, but Hannibal held fast, forcing Will to look into his eyes, boring into the haze of his madness Hannibal’s brand of truth. 

“There’s no blood, Will. There is nothing on you, you were hallucinating again.”

“No it’s there. How can you not see it? It’s right here, on my hands, it’s on my shirt-”

“Abigail, come here,” Hannibal ordered and Abigail started, surprised to be drawn into their grand pantomime.

“Abigail?” Will’s voice cracked. “Oh, God, Abigail, don’t look. Please, for the love of God don’t look, don’t look at what I’ve done.”

Hannibal’s eyes blazed above Will’s head as he crushed the other man to his chest with a firm hold. Abigail cleared her throat, she knew what she had to do.

“I don’t see anything.” Her voice didn’t even have the decency to waver as the lie spilled from her lips. She had, after all, always been good at lying. “There’s nothing there, Will.”

Will shuddered in Hannibal’s embrace, but he didn’t say another word after that.

“You went back to work too soon,” Hannibal was saying, words weaving themselves together, reshaping reality. “I had my doubts and I should have said something. Something happened today, something that upset you enough to trigger the hallucinations. But you’re home, you’re here now with me. Abigail is here, we are all safe. Now, let’s go upstairs.”

As obedient as a child, Will went where he was told. 

“I guess I’ll just clean up, then” Abigail muttered at their backs as they left. She surveyed the destruction Will had wrought, at the carpet she had her doubts would ever be clean again, but she would do her best. Hannibal would accept nothing less.

Peering at the slack face of what was left of Alana Bloom, Abigail felt the distant stirring of something like sadness. This really sucked, she thought as she thumbed the wide eyes closed. Abigail hadn’t had a problem with Alana. The other woman had been really nice back when Abigail was in the hospital, recovering, and made it plain that she was in Abigail’s corner that awful day she had been called in to identify Nicholas Boyle’s body. She was no Hannibal, of course, and hadn’t filled that yawning chasm that Abigail had had back then. That pathological need to belong to someone that Hannibal and Will had eagerly stepped up to fulfill. But, she had been someone whose intentions seemed pure, which, in Abigail’s brave new world was a rarity. 

Sentimentality, she knew, would be her eventual downfall, especially if she were ever up against anyone as amoral as Hannibal. She collected the organs Will had harvested, carefully preserving each one before putting them in the fridge. Hannibal had his own system for this sort of thing, of course, but Abigail did the best she could. After all, if they didn’t eat the meat- didn’t honor Alana’s memory- it was just murder. As loathe as she was to think of her biological father, the sentiment had been so impressed upon her, she just couldn’t shake it. 

That done, Abigail could look at the body again, this time with the cool detachment of a critic, as Roebling might say. Seeing this kind of work up close was so different from seeing all those fuzzy jpegs on a screen. While obviously it wasn’t a genuine Chesapeake Ripper, there was enough care in the rendering that Abigail knew she was looking at something as close to the real deal as Will’s eidetic memory was able to produce.

There was a feel to the work of something meticulous, and nothing so crude as a copycat like that Gideon guy. More like a forgery in the old sense of the word, in the days when apprentices would take great pains and years of intense study to perfect their master artist’s technique, as a show of gratitude and respect (and wasn’t it sign enough that she shouldn’t be sleeping with her art history professor when thoughts like _that_ popped into her head at a time like this). 

If the Chesapeake Ripper used his kills to write love letters to Will, then this was Will’s veneration of the Chesapeake Ripper.

Overhead, Abigail could hear the sound of the faucet turning on in the bathroom, and she knew she ought to start cleaning up, as well. There was a lot of work to be done, but she was confident she could do it all, and do it well. Make Hannibal proud of what’s she’s capable of, even if she hadn’t been able to do the deed herself. Baby steps, she thought, rolling the limp body into a tarp from the garage.


	4. Chapter 4

The news that Dr. Alana Bloom was missing got around fast. _Your tax dollars at work,_ Abigail thought to herself as she watched Jack Crawford trying to convince Hannibal to let Will come out and look into the doctor’s disappearance only hours after Abigail had finished disposing of her body.

“I am sorry, Jack, truly I am. Unfortunately it just isn’t possible. Will’s health has taken a turn for the worse, I’m afraid, and it would be morally irresponsible for me to allow him back into the field to investigate a case that involves someone he cares as deeply for as Dr. Bloom.”

“And you don’t find it morally irresponsible that you continue to serve as his psychiatrist when you’re sleeping with the man?” Jack Crawford was terrifying when he was angry, voice thunderous. Abigail imagined a Greek god would have a voice like that, she could practically hear the crackle of lightening with every word.

“You were the one that brought him to me, to assess whether or not Will’s tenuous mental stability was enough for the work you wanted him to do. Now I am telling you it is not.”

“And I’m telling you that this is Alana and she’s gone missing. She’s one of ours, Hannibal, and we need our best and brightest on this case while there’s still a chance she’s alive.”

“As much as my heart aches for Dr. Bloom-”

“Does it?” Jack broke in, words spitting like venom. “Because it doesn’t seem like you care enough to me.”

“Do not cast aspirations on me when it was you and your lack of foresight that pushed Will to the tipping point so soon after his illness.” The calm, precise way he spoke was just as terrifying as the brimstone in Jack’s voice, probably more so, but Abigail was biased. “Now he is of no use to you, precisely when you need him most, and we both know where the blame lies.”

Abigail had seen enough, so she slipped out of the room as noiselessly as she had entered and padded up the stairs. Pushing open the door to Hannibal’s room revealed Will, still warm from his bath and blinking foggily.

“What’s going on down there,” Will asked and Abigail realized she could hear the faint sounds of Jack’s rage, even though she couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Don’t worry about it,” Abigail said, keeping her voice hushed and calm. Will turned up his hand and she made her way to the bed, sitting on the edge to hold it, just like she had in the hospital.

“Jack is just mad that he broke his favorite toy,” Abigail said and Will chuckled faintly. 

“I was broken long before Jack Crawford came into my life,” Will said, voice resigned. It made something inside of Abigail ache to hear, so she crawled up the bed, burrowing into Will’s side. His cotton shirt was soft on her cheek, and she took comfort in the rise and fall of his chest. He took a long breath and Abigail half-expected him to speak but the seconds ticked by and still he said nothing. Eventually he took her in his arms and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

“For what?”

“I really wanted to be better for you than your father was. I know now it was foolish, but I thought I had a chance of keeping it together, for your sake if no one else’s.”

“You’re not-”

“No. I am. What you saw tonight...” Will’s voice trailed away and Abigail crooked her neck enough she could see his familiar blue eyes glazed over with memory. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, to see me lose it like that. It was all so real, I really thought I had....” 

Again his voice trailed off, deep in thought, and Abigail couldn’t help thinking: _That’s because you_ did.

“I destroy everything I touch; I made my peace with that fact long ago. And I don’t mind falling into madness, I just can’t stand the thought that I’ll bring you down with me.”

Abigail didn’t know what to say to that, so she let the silence build around them, holding on to Will until his breath evened out into sleep. Some time later, it could have been minutes or hours for all she knew, Hannibal came into the room. He stopped short when he saw them, curled together in the dim room.

Fingertips fiddling with his cufflinks, he regarded Will, deep in sleep, as Abigail watched. When finally he moved, it was to sit carefully by Abigail’s hip to smooth Will’s wild, dark hair away from his forehead. Will muttered in his sleep, held on to Abigail tighter. 

“I must thank you, Abigail, for doing such a good job tidying up. You made fast work of it, which was fortunate for Jack Crawford’s sake.”

“He doesn’t think it was Will, does he?”

“Do you have so very little faith in me, Abigail?”

Which didn’t exactly answer the question. Well, only time would tell, she thought, bitter at the man for the first time since he had taken her under his wing. He played so many games, twisted their minds through so many dark corridors, until they couldn’t tell which way was up. And for what? What purpose could it possibly serve?

“Should I have faith in you?” She challenged, voice low in consideration of Will, slumbering behind her. 

“You are angry,” Hannibal noted, voice pained, the liar. 

“I just don’t get it,” she said, emboldened by the dark and the deeds she had already performed that night. “What is it you want from us? What can you possibly gain by breaking him like this?”

“But I’m not breaking him,” Hannibal said, surprised at the accusation. “I’m making him stronger.”

“He says he thinks he’s crazy. He’s afraid it’s his fault that I’m crazy, too.” Hannibal sighed, turning away. She pressed her advantage. “Why us? What made you chose us to do this to? To make us into these horrible things?”

“Because you are both special.” Abigail scoffed, and Hannibal’s back stiffened. “You might not believe it, but you are. In both you and Will I see so much potential, I see the possibility of something truly great. But like any seedling, you must be cultivated, coaxed, before you can fully bloom.”

“By torturing us?”

“If need be.” The bed creaked as Hannibal shifted. “I believe Will to be far stronger than he himself believes. It is unfortunate that he must be broken before he can see that for himself, but it is for the best.”

“What if you push him too far? What if you break him and he isn’t able to come back?”

“Then he is not the man I thought him to be.” Leaning over Abigail, he pressed a kiss to Will’s forehead. On the surface it might have been a fond gesture, but Abigail had learned that with Hannibal, everything had more than one meaning- _why say just one thing when you can say eight_ \- and to Abigail’s discerning eye, Hannibal was laying claim to the fragmented mind just under the skin his lips brushed. “It would be unfortunate, of course, and I’m sure I would mourn the loss, but life would go on.”

“And me?”

“I see raw talent in you, Abigail. Crude, but with enough encouragement, well, who knows? You could be my greatest achievement, or you could be my greatest adversary.”

“Which is the higher honor?” She asked and he smiled, as genuinely pleased as she had ever seen him.

“We will have to see when that day comes, won’t we?”

The greatest adversary of the Chesapeake Ripper. Great, no pressure there. Only the greatest minds at Quantico, a cadre of FBI, scores of cops, and who knew how many serial killers had gone up against the man, and still he had come out on top. It was daunting, and it soon consumed her thoughts, which might have been Hannibal’s intention all along. 

_Maybe this is where_ my _madness lies?_

If that’s what he was going for, it was certainly working. And if Hannibal’s words weren’t the thing that pushed her over the edge, it would certainly be Professor Roebling that did it. 

“There’s a new exhibition at the Hirshhorn, I thought maybe we could go check it out. Maybe rent a room, stay the weekend?”

“Now’s not really a good time,” Abigail said, starting to get annoyed to have been waylaid on her way out of the classroom. She needed to drop off an assignment with her European history professor before he left his office, and then run to her dorm and pack an overnight for the weekend. At this point she really should just start leaving clothes at Hannibal’s place, for all the time she had been spending there.

Since killing Alana, Will’s new passion in life seemed to be sleep. More often then not he could be found in Hannibal’s bed, lost to the tender mercies of his unconsciousness, a sleep so deep not even his imagination could find him there. It was enough like the time he had been in a coma that Abigail found it creepy, but who was she to criticize a coping mechanism? She was starting to believe Will had the right of it, if she were asleep she certainly wouldn’t have to deal with Roebling as he held the door closed desperately pleading with her. 

“We can go next weekend,” he tried.

“I’m busy next weekend, too.”

“How about dinner? Tonight? We can get dressed up, go somewhere nobody knows us from Adam-”

“I’m going to my parents’ for dinner. Look, Professor Roebling-”

“ _Mike,_ ” be broke in, exasperated.

“-there’s a lot going on with my family right now, and I need to be with them.”  
“That’s what you’ve been saying for weeks now. I haven’t seen you outside of the classroom in all this time and it’s killing me.”

 _It’s not killing you now,_ Abigail thought. _But keep it up and we’ll see how far we get._

“What can I say? Family’s very important to me.” 

“And that’s admirable, but you’ve got to cut those apron strings some time!” Roebling grabbed her hand, forestalling her further. “When I had my first conference with you what did I tell you? That you needed to figure out who you are, to find that thing that inspires you to discover yourself. I said I wanted to find out who Abigail Hobbs was. Well, how can you possibly learn who you are when all you do is run back to Mommy and Daddy every weekend?”

Abigail’s back stiffened and she could feel her expression close down. Coldly, in a voice she hardly recognized she said: “Thank you for your feedback, Professor Roebling-”

“- _Mike_ -”

“- now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be late for dinner. With my parents.”

***

The thing that annoyed Abigail the most about Roebling’s words was that she had the nagging feeling he was right. More and more she found excuses to make the drive in to Baltimore, checking up on Will who had all but made Hannibal’s bedroom his private residence. Most nights, if Abigail was there, he could be coaxed downstairs into sitting down to dinner. She had her private suspicions it was the only meal of the day he _didn’t_ sleep through and so felt it her responsibility to make sure she was there, her presence guilting him until he ate. 

Will looked small and out of place in the opulent dining room, with its ostrich egg centerpieces and flora design details, and Abigail had the horrible feeling that he was slipping away from them. His feet were bare and, compared to the meticulously outfitted Hannibal, his cotton shirt and wrinkled boxer shorts were hopelessly lacking. Will didn’t talk much, blinked a lot, and sometimes he stared at Abigail as if using her presence as a barometer to determine whether or not he was actually awake.

Hannibal, who was never the most forthcoming conversationalist at the best of times, ate with a silence that had haughty nobility written all over it. Abigail knew she was supposed to be the normal one, Will’s last link to the outside world, but as she found herself subsumed in the Lecter Family Drama, she had less and less normality to offer.

“I think I found someone to adopt Wilbur,” Abigail offered after carefully swallowing her bite of braised lamb’s shoulder.

“Oh?” Will asked, after a pause that stretched longer than society generally dictated was polite. He was probably trying to work out who Wilbur was and why he was supposed to mean something. 

“Yeah. There’s a girl at school who’s brother is looking for a dog, one that would go hunting on the weekends. I figured it would be a good fit, even if Wilbur has to live in the suburbs the rest of the time.”

“That’s wonderful,” Hannibal said, carefully dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin. 

“Now there’s just Winston left,” Abigail said, looking down at the dog with his head loyally laying in Will’s lap. Since Will had gotten worse- _given up_ \- he hadn’t made a fuss when Hannibal suggested breaking up his beloved dog pack, giving them away one at a time. Will had agreed with Hannibal’s diagnoses that he was in no state to take care of another living creature when he couldn’t even be bothered to put pants on for dinner. Abigail tried to make sure they went to good homes, in case Will ever woke up one day and actually cared about anything, but it hadn’t happened yet.

Winston’s head came up, sharp and cocked, a moment before the doorbell rang. Abigail couldn’t help the instinct that had her looking to Hannibal at the sound, and realized that Will had done the same. Hannibal cleared his throat and set his flatware down with deliberateness. 

“Who could that be,” he mused as he pushed his chair away from the table to stand. 

Will’s eyes were wide, hunted. “If it’s Jack,” he started but Hannibal interrupted smoothly.

“- then you are otherwise engaged.”

Minutes passed as Will and Abigail sat, backs stiff and in silence, waiting for Hannibal to return. Finally he did, a dark cloud on his face.

“Abigail, if you would come with me,” and Abigail felt like she was going to throw up. Oh god, what if they had found where she had buried Alana Bloom or that homeless guy? She stood like she was headed to her own execution when another man came rushing in behind Hannibal.

“I told you to wait in the study,” Hannibal’s voice was sharp as glass and brooked no argument. 

“I know but you don’t understand. I had to see you, Abigail,” and Abigail was startled to realize that the pathetic creature in the disheveled clothes reeking of whiskey was Roebling.

“What are you _doing_ here?” She demanded, conscious of Hannibal and Will as they stared at her, waiting for an explanation.

“I couldn’t help it, I had to see you. I checked your student record for the address I, I- I love you, Abigail. I’m crazy for you. I can’t stop thinking about you all the time, it’s making me crazy.” He hiccuped a laugh, rubbing a hand across his sweat slicked forehead. “I left my wife tonight, walked out on her, because I want to be with _you_ Abigail.”

Abigail was in such shock she didn’t know what to say. Thank goodness for the unflappable Hannibal who commented evenly, “I believe introductions are in order, Abigail.”

“Uh, yeah,” it was like the most surreal dream. “Professor Roebling, this is Dr. Lecter and Will Graham. Hannibal, Will, this is my art history teacher Professor Roebling.”

“ _Mike._ ”

“I see,” said Hannibal. “Professor, I’m afraid you’ve caught us in the middle of dinner and while normally I would invite you to join us, I hope you can understand that under the circumstances I am going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere without Abigail,” Roebling said, voice as unsteady as his posture. How much _had_ he had to drink?

Will was shaking his head, frowning deeply, as if fighting his way through the fog of his mind. “I’m sorry, did you say this is your _professor_?

Abigail nodded once, too ashamed to speak.

“And have you been _sleeping_ with our _daughter_?”

“I love her-” Roebling started by Will was standing up, eyes blazing.

“I don’t give a fuck how you feel.” Roebling’s jaw shut with an audible snap. With his face flushed with anger, nostrils flaring, it was the most animate Abigail had ever seen Will. It was as terrifying as it was glorious to behold. “Abigail, did he come on to you?”

Abigail nodded again.

“So you used your authority as her teacher to coerce her into a sexual relationship?”

“It wasn’t like-”

“I don’t believe you,” Will spat, as feral as when he had been covered with Alana Bloom’s blood. “You will leave our home. Now. And on Monday you will hand in your resignation or I will personally talk to the president of the University and inform him of your flagrant breech of morals.”

“Abigail and I are both consenting adults-”

“No, Abigail is an emotionally vulnerable young woman and _you_ are a manipulative predator.”

“You can’t-” Roebling stepped forward, fists clenched.

“I can. I am her goddam _father_ and the most dangerous man you will ever meet if you so much as look at Abigail again. Do you understand me?” There was murder in each word Will spoke, his words colored with every shade of death he had ever seen, and Roebling could only stare at Will and nod. 

“Now get out.” 

He did.


	5. Chapter 5

Abigail wasn’t all that surprised when, a week after Professor Roebling had mysteriously and abruptly handed in his resignation, there came the news through the University grapevine that he was dead. What _was_ surprising was that there was none of Hannibal’s usual flair to the murder; no missing body parts, no artistic displays, which was especially strange when Abigail thought about it. She had to admit the irony of displaying the art history teacher like one of his beloved High Renaissance paintings would have been hard to resist, even for her. 

Instead, it was reported as a mugging gone bad, a wrong-place-wrong-time situation which left Roebling dead in an alley, a single gunshot wound to the chest. It was so unexpectedly _ordinary_ , it was almost a disappointment. If Hannibal had been killing for Abigail’s honor, she would have appreciated a little more effort, and a lot more imagination. This was little more than swatting a particularly pernicious fly. 

In fact, it was so uneventful, Roebling’s death was barely even reported by the local news. A mugging was just a blip on the radar here in the land of serial killers and gruesome death scenes. Muggings didn’t sell papers, not in this economy. The only place where it mattered seemed to be at the University, where the staff was bending over backward to make sure the students were coping with the news. Emails littered their inboxes, encouraging the student body to avail themselves of the grief counselors that were there to help them through this “difficult time.” There was even a memorial service planned, to honor the memory of the beloved professor.

Abigail hadn’t realized he was considered “beloved” by any of his students, but she supposed death did funny things to people’s memories. 

Will stopped sleeping so much after that night. It seemed his display of rage in the dining room was the panacea he had needed to finally rejoin them in the real world. It might have been a relief, but instead of returning to teaching, Will had thrown himself into the investigation into Alana’s disappearance with as much zeal as he had once avoided it. And as confidant as she was that the body wouldn’t be found, she was somewhat concerned the false memories Hannibal had planted in Will’s mind wouldn’t be enough to override that extraordinary imagination of Will’s, sending him into another depression. 

She might have been more than “somewhat” concerned for Will, if only his temper would stop flaring up. As taciturn as he had been before, now it was like there was this anger simmering just under his skin’s surface at all time, a gasoline spill just waiting for the smallest spark to ignite. The stupidest things could set him off, and there was no telling what it would be next. Unless it was related to Abigail, because it seemed like suddenly everything she did was a capital offense. 

She tried to keep her mouth shut, telling herself that the Will with the hair-trigger temper was no more in control of himself than the depressed, bed-ridden Will of weeks earlier. Besides, there was a part of her that halfway believed she deserved it. Sleeping with Roebling had done something to Will, fractured their relationship, and she knew she only had herself to blame for it. 

Of course, her pride could only take so much, and one evening, as the sun was setting through the windows of the kitchen, she started yelling back.

“I don’t know what you want me to say!”

Will’s eyes were wide, blazing. “I want you to take some _responsibility_ for yourself for once in your life.”

“It was _one_ test, Will. I bombed _one_ test, it’s not like the world is going to end!” 

“If you would stop messing around and just _apply_ yourself-”

“It’s not like I’m the only one that failed, why don’t you call up everyone else in my class, tell _them_ how much more they need to apply themselves? Since clearly someone died and made you ruler of the goddam universe. Hannibal, you’re a psychiatrist, you tell Will he’s being a complete psycho!”

Will’s head snapped around, surprised, evidently not having heard Hannibal enter the room. The wild fury in Will’s eyes might have made a lesser man blanch, but Hannibal just observed the scene passively. “It’s not a diagnosis I would make lightly, Abigail. And it is certainly not one I would apply to Will.” He gave a slight smile. “That is unless he began exhibiting psychopathic behavior.”

“Is being a pissy bitch considered psychopathic behavior?” Abigail muttered just loud enough for Will to hear her. She could see in his reddening cheeks that a massive blow up was imminent but she didn’t care. Let him scream at her all he wanted, he’d only been doing it every day for the past week. Abigail had finally had enough, she wasn’t going to back down this time. 

“Will,” Hannibal said and just like that, Will’s impending wrath was cut short. _The voice of his master,_ Abigail thought, smirking, and opened her mouth to say as much.

“Abigail,” Hannibal warned, voice like steel, and without meaning to Abigail found herself obeying the sound. 

Hannibal sighed and Abigail could hear weight in it, like he was trapped under a monumental burden, and she had the sinking suspicion that burden was Abigail. Silence fell, heavy and damning. She could feel the guilt starting to creep up, smother her, that familiar voice that kept her up all those nights in the psychiatric ward, whispering “It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault.” Garrett Jacob Hobbs had killed because of her-  
_all your fault_ -and she’s been so worried she’d let Hannibal down, lose his interest- _all your fault_ -that she hadn’t even considered the fact that it might be _Will_ that couldn’t stand her anymore. That Will, of all people, would finally get sick of having her around.

Her throat tightened but she could whisper through it to say: “If you don’t want me around, Will, then just say so.” She couldn’t bring herself to face him. To look at Will, to see the resignation on his face, would be too awful to bear. Instead, she looked at Hannibal, who’s face never gave him away, was as cool and distant as ever. “I’ll leave and I won’t bother you again. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, playing house like this. Maybe I should just go.”

She spared a glance at Will, who was looking away, his jaw clenched. His silence was just as terrible as if he had been yelling. Hannibal was of no use, he seemed to be regarding the scene as if he were observing surgery in an operating theater: interested but distant, as if the outcome were of less consequence then the actual proceedings. 

Finally Will spoke, and it made her chest fill with lead.

“Maybe that would be for the best.”

Numb. She was so numb that she couldn’t say later whether anything else was said before she turned away. Suddenly she was in her car, with no real memory of having made the walk through the house and down the driveway. She couldn’t get the key into the ignition and it wasn’t until she looked down that she realized it was because her hands were shaking. 

_Deep breaths, Abigail. You’ve lived through worse, you can get through this, too._

Driving when she could barely see the road through the lightness in her head was probably a terrible idea, but she was on autopilot. Rote learning made her stop at the red lights before she even realized her foot was on the break, muscle memory made her properly signal every left turn before she was even aware of being in a turn lane. 

Through it all there was a part of her, self destructive and getting louder with every passing minute, that was goading her to do something horrible. Slam into another car head on or rev up the engine and sail over the highway’s safety rail. She was so lost in the fantasy of it, imagining her car all twisted and mangled, that she realized she had sailed past the exit for College Park. 

Just as well, she didn’t want to be in her dorm room anyway. 

Abigail drove until the self loathing turned outward, until every car that failed to signal before turning and every pedestrian that jay walked infuriated her beyond reason. She felt the seething anger in her belly and when she couldn’t take it anymore she finally parked her car.

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to her decision. She just wanted somebody to suffer like she was suffering. Abigail wanted someone to hurt like she was hurting. 

_Wrong place wrong time,_ she though to the man that followed her into a dark alley. Beneath the long shadow of a dumpster she smashed his head into the brick wall with a sickening thunk, her anger fueling her strength so that he collapsed on the first try. 

It wasn’t even a conscious thought. She took her unfortunate to Will’s house. 

Everything had long ago been packed up, so that only a few pieces of furniture remained. The white walls were bare, which was the important thing. Filled with purpose, Abigail cleared the living room. She pushed all the furniture into the kitchen and swept away all the detritus until she had a clean workspace. Sometime during all that work her unfortunate started to come to, but she slammed his head into the floor and that seemed to do the trick. Back to the car for ropes (thanks Professor, for all the extracurricular tutoring) and the gleaming knife that she kept in the trunk, the one that she had found in her bed what felt like so long ago. 

In a fever she worked, gutting- 

_don’t nick the bowels_

and slicing- 

_it was never about love for me_ \- 

-and extracting- 

_I just can’t stand the thought that I’ll bring you down with me_

-until she had all the raw materials that she needed. 

When she was done the wall was as saturated with color as any work by Ad Reinhardt. Viscera was deconstructed, collaged and restructured across the floor like a Rauschenberg. The room was a work of installation art. 

It was a masterpiece. It was everything her teachers had wanted from her and more. Abigail had finally found her voice and it was beautiful. 

Abigail’s phone rang, fifty minutes past midnight. It was Will.

“I am so sorry, Abigail,” he said.

“I need to explain something to you,” he said. 

“I killed your professor. I shot him. I couldn’t stop thinking of him taking advantage of you. Using you. So I shot him,” he said.

“You deserve to know.”

"Don't tell Hannibal."

“I’m a monster.”

And Abigail, gingerly holding the phone to her ear, mindful of the blood now growing tacky on her fingers, could only laugh. 

“Well,” she said when she could breath again. “You’re in good company.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. I really can't thank all of you enough for your support and encouragement through this whole process. When I started this thing, my goal was to have 20 kudos, I thought that was a reasonable goal. I am completely blown away at how responsive and generous you have all been. I know that it's such a tacky, silly thing to say but I really am.
> 
> Thanks a million.


End file.
